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Are tax breaks for places of worship outdated?

Q: I attended a church that completed a $500,000 campaign for a new roof. If every member used the income tax deduction for their “charitable donation,” nearly $150,000 would be lost to public coffers for that renovation. The church also pays no property tax. I find that hard to swallow, particularly when the resident preacher waxes eloquent on Sundays about “the privilege of paying taxes.” Isn’t this ethically inconsistent?

A: This is a tricky question, made trickier for me (disclosure time) by the fact that I have drawn a church salary for much of my career. I have also been heard to opine upon government’s obligation to provide a secure social safety net, and our obligation to pay, through taxes, for that.

So I have been that guy ... except for the eloquence.

There was a time when it made sense for churches, synagogues and the rest to enjoy charitable and tax-free status in Canada. During the 20th century, faith groups were instrumental in providing a variety of social services; churches were the hubs of most communities, offering not just food and clothing for the poor, but also counselling, values-based programming for young people, crisis intervention, and a meeting place for people of all sorts — all in addition to the formalized religious rituals at the core of their lives.

And there was more. In every small town and city back then, the majority of volunteers in the hospital, school, seniors’ home, Rotary Club and everywhere else were members of a local church or synagogue. The extent to which their community participation was a direct result of their faith was debatable — but what could not be argued was that a disproportionate number of the folks who made communities work were also active in places of worship.

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So, simply put — in those days, tax-free status could be ethically defended, because to replace the space required by groups that met in the local church, and to replace the volunteer hours put in by members of the synagogue, would have cost government enormously more than it lost in taxes.

But that was then. This is now.

Today, too many religious institutions are largely absorbed in one of four activities: ministering to their own dying members, defining the boundaries of their own faith, renting their facilities for profit, or keeping their roof from leaking.

Those may (or may not) be worthwhile activities. But they are not worthy of public subsidization.

I’m not quite ready to argue that houses of worship should be stripped, automatically, of charitable or tax-free status. Many still do community-based work that is enormously valuable, both socially and financially. Given how governments operate (think ORNGE), it would cost 10 times as much for them to host an “Out of the Cold” program as it costs in the basement of St. Swithens. And while your well-waxed preacher gets her housing tax-free, she still earns a lot less than Chris Mazza.

But perhaps the time has come when places of worship wanting tax breaks should have to prove, in some equitable way, that they deserve them. Religious communities that merely take care of their own are free to do so — but taxpayers needn’t subsidize them for the privilege.

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